Thursday, August 27, 2009

Is it true that "History and society are not law-governed systems for which
we might eventually hope to find exact and comprehensive theories"?:

Revisiting Popper, by Daniel Little: Karl Popper's most commonly cited
contribution to philosophy and the philosophy of science is his theory of
falsifiability (The
Logic of Scientific Discovery,
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge).
(Stephen Thornton has a very nice
essay on Popper's
philosophy in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.) In its essence, this theory is an alternative to
"confirmation theory." Contrary to positivist philosophy of science, Popper
doesn't think that scientific theories can be confirmed by more and more
positive empirical evidence. Instead, he argues that the logic of scientific
research is a critical method in which scientists do their best to "falsify"
their hypotheses and theories. And we are rationally justified in accepting
theories that have been severely tested through an effort to show they are false
-- rather than accepting theories for which we have accumulated a body of
corroborative evidence. Basically, he argues that scientists are in the business
of asking this question: what is the most unlikely consequence of this
hypothesis? How can I find evidence in nature that would demonstrate that the
hypothesis is false? Popper criticizes theorists like Marx and Freud who attempt
to accumulate evidence that corroborates their theories (historical materialism,
ego transference) and praises theorists like Einstein who honestly confront the
unlikely consequences their theories appear to have (perihelion of Mars).

At bottom, I think many philosophers of science have drawn their own conclusions
about both falsifiability and confirmation theory: there is no recipe for
measuring the empirical credibility of a given scientific theory, and there is
no codifiable "inductive logic" that might replace the forms of empirical
reasoning that we find throughout the history of science. Instead, we need to
look in greater detail at the epistemic practices of real research communities
in order to see the nuanced forms of empirical reasoning that are brought
forward for the evaluation of scientific theories. Popper's student, Imre
Lakatos, makes one effort at this (Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes;
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge);
so does William Newton-Smith (The
Rationality of Science),
and much of the philosophy of science that has proceeded under the rubrics of
philosophy of physics, biology, or economics is equally attentive to the
specific epistemic practices of real working scientific traditions. So "falsifiability"
doesn't seem to have a lot to add to a theory of scientific rationality at this
point in the philosophy of science. In particular, Popper's grand critique of
Marx's social science on the grounds that it is "unfalsifiable" just seems to
miss the point; surely Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, or Tocqueville have
important social science insights that can't be refuted by deriding them as "unfalsifiable".
And Popper's impatience with Marxism makes one doubt his objectivity as a
sympathetic reader of Marx's work.

Of greater interest is another celebrated idea that Popper put forward, his
critique of “historicism” (Popper 1957). And unlike the theory of falsifiability,
I think that there are important insights in this discussion that are even more
useful today than they were in 1957, when it comes to conceptualizing the nature
of the social sciences. So people who are a little dismissive of Popper may find
that there are novelties here that they will find interesting.

Popper characterizes historicism as “an approach to the social sciences which
assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim, and which assumes
that this aim is attainable by discovering the ‘rhythms’ or the ‘patterns’, the
‘laws’ or the ‘trends’ that underlie the evolution of history” (3). Historicists
differ from naturalists, however, in that they believe that the laws that govern
history are themselves historically changeable. So a given historical epoch has
its own laws and generalizations – unlike the laws of nature that are uniform
across time and space. So historicism involves combining two ideas: prediction
of historical change based on a formulation of general laws or patterns; and a
recognition that historical laws and patterns are themselves variable over time,
in reaction to human agency.

Popper’s central conclusion is that large predictions of historical or social
outcomes are inherently unjustifiable -- a position taken up several times here
(post,
post).
He finds that “holistic” or “utopian” historical predictions depend upon
assumptions that simply cannot be justified; instead, he prefers “piecemeal”
predictions and interventions (21). What Popper calls “historicism” amounts to
the aspiration that there should be a comprehensive science of society that
permits prediction of whole future states of the social system, and also
supports re-engineering of the social system if we choose. In other words,
historicism in his description sounds quite a bit like social physics: the
aspiration of finding a theory that describes and predicts the total state of
society.

The kind of history with which historicists wish to identify sociology looks not
only backwards to the past but also forwards to the future. It is the study of
the operative forces and, above all, of the laws of social development. (45)

Popper rejects the feasibility or appropriateness of this vision of social
knowledge, and he is right to do so. The social world is not amenable to this
kind of general theoretical representation.

The social thinker who serves as Popper’s example of this kind of holistic
social theory is Karl Marx. According to Popper, Marx’s
Capital (Marx 1977 [1867]) is intended
to be a general theory of capitalist society, providing a basis for predicting
its future and its specific internal changes over time. And Marx’s theory of
historical materialism (“History is a history of class conflict,” “History is
the unfolding of the contradictions between the forces and relations of
production”; (Communist Manifesto,
Preface to a Contribution to Political Economy))
is Popper’s central example of a holistic theory of history. And it is Marx’s
theory of revolution that provides a central example for Popper under the
category of utopian social engineering. In
The Scientific Marx
I argue that Popper’s representation of Marx’s social science contribution is
flawed; rather, Marx's ideas about capitalism take the form of an eclectic
combination of sociology, economic theory, historical description, and
institutional analysis. It is also true, however, that Marx writes in
Capital that he is looking to identify
the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production.

Whatever the accuracy of Popper's interpretation of Marx, his more general point
is certainly correct. Sociology and economics cannot provide us with general
theories that permit the prediction of large historical change. Popper’s
critique of historicism, then, can be rephrased as a compelling critique of the
model of the natural sciences as a meta-theory for the social and historical
sciences. History and society are not law-governed systems for which we might
eventually hope to find exact and comprehensive theories. Instead, they are the
heterogeneous, plastic, and contingent compound of actions, structures, causal
mechanisms, and conjunctures that elude systematization and prediction. And this
conclusion brings us back to the centrality of agent-centered explanations of
historical outcomes.

I chose the
planetary photo above because it raises a number of complexities about
theoretical systems, comprehensive models, and prediction that need sorting out.
Popper observes that metaphors from astronomy have had a great deal of sway with
historicists: "Modern historicists have been greatly impressed by the success of
Newtonian theory, and especially by its power of forecasting the position of the
planets a long time ahead" (36). The photo is of a distant planetary system in
the making. The amount of debris in orbit makes it clear that it would be
impossible to model and predict the behavior of this system over time; this is
an n-body gravitational problem that even Newton despaired to solve. What
physics does succeed in doing is identifying the processes and forces that are
relevant to the evolution of this system over time -- without being able to
predict its course in even gross form. This is a good example of a complex,
chaotic system where prediction is impossible.

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"Revisiting Popper"

Is it true that "History and society are not law-governed systems for which
we might eventually hope to find exact and comprehensive theories"?:

Revisiting Popper, by Daniel Little: Karl Popper's most commonly cited
contribution to philosophy and the philosophy of science is his theory of
falsifiability (The
Logic of Scientific Discovery,
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge).
(Stephen Thornton has a very nice
essay on Popper's
philosophy in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.) In its essence, this theory is an alternative to
"confirmation theory." Contrary to positivist philosophy of science, Popper
doesn't think that scientific theories can be confirmed by more and more
positive empirical evidence. Instead, he argues that the logic of scientific
research is a critical method in which scientists do their best to "falsify"
their hypotheses and theories. And we are rationally justified in accepting
theories that have been severely tested through an effort to show they are false
-- rather than accepting theories for which we have accumulated a body of
corroborative evidence. Basically, he argues that scientists are in the business
of asking this question: what is the most unlikely consequence of this
hypothesis? How can I find evidence in nature that would demonstrate that the
hypothesis is false? Popper criticizes theorists like Marx and Freud who attempt
to accumulate evidence that corroborates their theories (historical materialism,
ego transference) and praises theorists like Einstein who honestly confront the
unlikely consequences their theories appear to have (perihelion of Mars).

At bottom, I think many philosophers of science have drawn their own conclusions
about both falsifiability and confirmation theory: there is no recipe for
measuring the empirical credibility of a given scientific theory, and there is
no codifiable "inductive logic" that might replace the forms of empirical
reasoning that we find throughout the history of science. Instead, we need to
look in greater detail at the epistemic practices of real research communities
in order to see the nuanced forms of empirical reasoning that are brought
forward for the evaluation of scientific theories. Popper's student, Imre
Lakatos, makes one effort at this (Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes;
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge);
so does William Newton-Smith (The
Rationality of Science),
and much of the philosophy of science that has proceeded under the rubrics of
philosophy of physics, biology, or economics is equally attentive to the
specific epistemic practices of real working scientific traditions. So "falsifiability"
doesn't seem to have a lot to add to a theory of scientific rationality at this
point in the philosophy of science. In particular, Popper's grand critique of
Marx's social science on the grounds that it is "unfalsifiable" just seems to
miss the point; surely Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, or Tocqueville have
important social science insights that can't be refuted by deriding them as "unfalsifiable".
And Popper's impatience with Marxism makes one doubt his objectivity as a
sympathetic reader of Marx's work.